


on the tip of your tongue

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, sad clocktower chats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 11:51:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: So when Lea finishes the laborious climb up the clocktower in Twilight Town and finds Sora sitting there, biting into his ice cream and then making a face when it gives him brain freeze, Lea knows there’s no good reason for how suddenly and impossibly angry he is. It’s not fair. Let the kid eat ice cream on the clocktower if he wants; Lea knows as well as anyone how good the view is. He’s gonna save the world or whatever. He can have this.But it’s wrong. This place isn’t his. This place is Axel’s, and Roxas’s, and—it’s theirs. It’s one of the few things they have left. Sora’s taken everything else, all the things that should’ve belonged to Roxas—can’t he leave them this one thing?





	on the tip of your tongue

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been ten literal years since I last wrote Kingdom Hearts fic, which is...extremely wild to think about! It was nice to revisit these characters now that I’m basically a completely different person. Also, it’s Danny’s fault.
> 
> Anyway, here’s to spending another ten years crying over this franchise. Axel/Roxas was my first ever ship and man, that shit is forever.

There’s rational feelings and irrational feelings; this is something Lea gets. See, when you’re a Nobody, the way you feel—even though you shouldn’t—it makes you do deeply stupid things. It makes you lash out at your friends, go running off without a word, tell so many lies your teeth start to hurt. 

It makes you decide that the best way out of a sticky situation is to throw yourself into an attack, all the way, the way that gets you dead. That kind of thing. 

It’s hard to think things through when you’re getting yelled at by something inside you that shouldn’t even _be_ there, that you never bothered to try to guard against because you thought you were _done_ with all of that, for better or for worse. 

It was what Isa’d said, like five minutes after he became Saix, when Axel was still trying his best not to throw up in a corner—in a totally cool way, obviously. He said, in that low tone he got when he was mulling something over, that at least now he wouldn’t have to worry anymore about Lea doing anything reckless and getting himself killed. No worry, and no recklessness to worry about—they were all set.

Joke’s on him, as always.

Somebodies can do their fair share of bullshit—Lea would certainly know—but they seem to have a better handle on the whole emotions situation. Probably from all the practice. Lea’s not looking forward to getting his own practice back in. His new heart’s still a little ragged. He hasn’t been too gentle with it. But at this point, it’s probably the last one he’s likely to get. Better take good care of it.

So when Lea finishes the laborious climb up the clocktower in Twilight Town and finds Sora sitting there, biting into his ice cream and then making a face when it gives him brain freeze, Lea knows there’s no good reason for how suddenly and impossibly angry he is. It’s not fair. Let the kid eat ice cream on the clocktower if he wants; Lea knows as well as anyone how good the view is. He’s gonna save the world or whatever. He can have this.

But it’s wrong. This place isn’t his. This place is Axel’s, and Roxas’s, and—it’s theirs. It’s one of the few things they have left. Sora’s taken everything else, all the things that should’ve belonged to Roxas—can’t he leave them this one thing?

“‘Sup,” Lea says, doing a bad job of hiding how annoyed he is. Whatever. Sora’s handled worse. Lea sits. His own ice cream is starting to melt a little. He takes a bite of it, sulkily. 

“Hey Lea!” Sora grins at him. The kid plasters grins on top of everything, like that’s gonna make it all okay. Roxas didn’t do that. Roxas barely knew how to smile the whole first month. Roxas only smiled when he meant it. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be training?”

“Yen Sid gave me the afternoon off.”

Yen Sid has never in his life given _anyone_ the afternoon off. “I heard he was having you clean the entire tower.”

Sora rubs the back of his head a little sheepishly. “Well, okay, but I magicked some of the brooms to do it, and if you think about it, that’s way harder than just doing it myself! So it’s better practice.” 

“Somehow, I don’t think Yen Sid is going to see it that way.”

He laughs. “Probably not. I just really needed a break.” Roxas didn’t even know what a vacation was until Axel told him. Sora takes another giant bite of his ice cream, and winces, and Roxas _did_ do that. Every time, like he’d forgotten it was going to hurt, or maybe like he just didn’t care. He just loved that stupid ice cream so much that it was worth it.

“Careful,” Lea says. “If you fall behind, me and Kairi’ll be masters before you. Blow you right out of the water.”

“I’d like to see you try!” That look he has right now, Roxas had that too. Kid never could back down from a challenge. 

Lea tips his head back, leaning against the tower, squinting into the sun. “And you decided the best way to spend your afternoon off was to sit all the way out here on this clocktower. Alone.”

“Well, yeah,” Sora says. He scratches at the back of his head. “It just...kind of felt like what I was supposed to do. And I had this feeling like you’d be here. I guess you had it too.”

Lea didn’t. He comes here most days, when he was a chance to sneak away from Yen Sid’s mystical tower of over-earnest weirdness. But the kid can think whatever makes him happy.

“You and him...you used to come here, right?”

“Sure.” Lea draws a leg up and balances his arm on it, looking away. He dedicates himself to finishing his ice cream as fast as possible so he can get the hell out of here. 

“Hey, come on,” Sora says, pushing lightly at his arm. “Don’t shut me out, Axel! You always do this—” 

Lea turns, and they both freeze at the same moment. The expression on Sora’s face is pitch-perfect Roxas. Stubborn and pissed and that insatiable need to _know_. 

Then it melts back into just being...sad. Or something. What does Lea know about emotions, anyway?

Who knows what Lea’s face looks like right now, but Sora doesn’t seem to like it. 

“Sorry,” Sora says. He rubs a hand over his face, like he’s trying to scrub something away. “That...happens, sometimes.”

It feels like something’s wrapped itself around Lea’s heart and squeezed. Tight. It’s pretty rude, frankly. That thing’s fragile. “Great,” he says, aiming for sarcastic and missing by mile. He just sounds raw.

“You can pretend I’m him,” Sora blurts out, all in a rush. “If you want. Just...I know you didn’t get to say everything you wanted to say. Or even goodbye. So you can. If you want.” 

Lea stares at him. Imagines spilling guts to this bright-eyed, sweet kid, who he’s known for a year, for what feels like a lifetime, and also for no time at all. 

Honestly, the thought makes him a little sick. He’d barely been able to stomach telling Roxas the truth about—it doesn’t matter what. It just wasn’t easy. Nothing was ever easy for them. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Lea pushes himself up. He’s been here long enough.

“Wait—” Sora catches him by the sleeve of his coat, yanking him back down. “I’m just trying to help.”

“Sora,” Lea says, “let me put it like this. If Riku was gone—gone forever—and someone came up to you and said, hey, you wanna talk to your good pal Riku again? Well, you can’t, but I’ve got something that’s not the same, but hey, I swear, it’s _just_ as good—how would that make you feel?” Lea remembers the look on Sora’s face when he faced down Riku’s replica, actually. Back then, Sora hadn’t been anything but something standing in Roxas’s—in Axel’s way. Sora treated the replica like the real thing. But Sora’s not like most people.

“Not...great,” Sora admits, slumping. “Sorry. I just want to help.”

“I know, kid.”

They sit in silence. The sun’s starting to set, red bleeding gold. 

“Um. You could...tell me about him? I mean, I remember some of it. Kind of. It’s not very clear, and there are holes, and there’s stuff in there that I think might belong to someone else. And I think you probably saw him differently than he saw himself. I know that’s what it’s like with Riku. He looks in the mirror and sees someone he hasn’t been in a long time.” 

Barely anyone remembers Roxas. And the people who do, the tattered remnants of the Organization—none of them understood him, anyway. They just saw this puppet, this echo of Sora that they could use to do whatever they wanted. The saw the keyblades and they didn’t bother to look any further. Even Roxas thought the keyblade was the secret to unlocking who he really was—as if he wasn’t already somebody all on his own, without his memories, without his past, without his purpose. As if he wasn’t somebody worth missing. 

Sure. Why not. If Lea wanted to get out of this unscathed, he should have turned around the moment he saw that Sora was up here. “We came here after every mission,” he says. “Until everything fell apart. He had to know the truth, you know? About why he had the keyblade. It was eating him up inside, not knowing, and I couldn’t tell him. Some friend, right? We came here, and we ate ice cream, and shot the shit. Talked about whatever. Sunsets and vacations and love. All this stuff he didn’t understand, because he couldn’t remember being you. He was so stubborn. Until the very end.” He’d fought Axel like hell in Twilight Town, when he barely even knew what a keyblade was. He wanted to do the right thing, even though he didn’t understand any of it at all. He didn’t want to come back with Axel. He couldn’t leave Sora. His heart wouldn’t let him. “I promised him something, you know?” 

“What?” Sora has his hands twisted together in his lap, like he’s not sure what to do with them. Roxas never knew either. But maybe Lea’s just seeing what he wants to see—probably Sora’s just trying to stop himself from touching Lea, putting a hand on his back or around his shoulders, because he doesn’t know if it would be welcome.

Lea doesn’t know either. “I promised him that I’d always be there to bring him back. I promised. And I couldn’t even do that right.” 

“Lea,” Sora says. His voice has gone all hesitant. He reaches out. “You’re…”

“Yeah, I get it,” Lea says, scrubbing at his wet face, knocking Sora’s hand away. “What a sob story, right?”

Sora looks so _sad_ , like his heart’s all twisted up. His big heart, big enough to hold every important person in the world, apparently, including the one who Lea would give anything to see. Just one last time. 

“Hey, Lea.”

“Still here, kid.”

“Close your eyes, okay? Just for a minute.” 

Axel’s life would have gone pretty differently if he’d ever known how to say no to a set of big pleading blue eyes. He thinks Saix told him that once. Maybe Isa. Things are kind of mixed up, these days. He closes his eyes. 

The squeezing this time isn’t around his heart. It’s just Sora, arms wrapped around his middle, hugging him like his life depends on it. Lea opens his mouth to say something—but he digs his hands into the ledge of the clocktower and shuts it again. Breathes in, and out, letting his heartbeat count time.

There’s a face buried in his shoulder and spikes of hair brushing against his chin. Axel’d found Roxas wandering around the halls in the middle of the night again. The nightmares seemed to be more intense for him—maybe because his other memories were all missing. Sometimes he went all blank again when Axel found him, and sometimes he clung like this, like Axel was the only thing left in the world. Axel never would have admitted to liking it. But hey—it was nice to be needed. It was nice to be able to make someone else feel safe. And he didn’t have to think about the future those nights, about the precarious tightrope he was walking, about how Saix was probably this close to getting so pissed he murdered Axel in his bed. He just had Roxas, sleepy and quiet and still ready to make fun of the tacky decor in Axel’s room at a moment’s notice. 

Lea stays there for a minute longer, and then he opens his eyes. “Thanks, Sora.” 

Sora squeezes him a little harder, just for a second, pressing his face in against Lea’s neck. “Anytime,” he says. Lea, out of the goodness of his heart, doesn’t call him a crybaby when he sniffles a little. Pot, kettle, anyway. 

He wonders if Sora—if Roxas—was remembering the same thing.

It’s almost dark now. It’ll be cold if they stay here much longer. “Hey, Sora. Bet you don’t know why the sun sets red.” 

“I remember,” Sora says. “You can tell me anyway, though. I know you love the sound of your own voice.”

“Sure,” Lea says. “Can’t deprive the masses of something so beautiful, can I?”

“You’re so full of yourself,” Sora says, and Lea still can’t see his face, but he knows the expression on it well. Exasperated with Axel, but fond too, and trying hard to hide it. Roxas was never any good at hiding anything. Once he’d gone and grown a heart, he couldn’t help but wear it on his sleeve. 

So Lea tells Sora about the kinds of light that travel the farthest. He hopes that somewhere in there, Roxas can hear him. 

-

They stay on the clocktower until it’s dark. Sunset always seems to last a little longer than it should, in Twilight Town—Riku would probably make fun of him for saying that. Of course it does, it’s in the name, Sora, what do you expect? 

That kind of thing used to make Sora—not mad, not really. Riku is his best friend. But before they left Destiny Islands, things were starting to get a little...Sora doesn’t even know. He never did. That’s why it freaked him out so much. Maybe it’s what Kairi meant, when she asked Sora not to change—Riku was changing. He made fun of Sora in the same way he always had, except somehow it was a little meaner, a little sharper. Sora had to remind himself not to feel hurt, because that would be stupid. Riku was his best friend. 

Probably they still would have worked things out _without_ the universe almost ending a few times, but Sora knows Riku. He can be so dramatic. So they worked it out while stopping the universe from ending a few times, and Riku doesn’t make fun of him like that anymore. Riku makes fun of him in the way that makes Sora feel all warm and soft inside, the way Roxas feels when he teases Lea. It’s a step to the left from how fond Roxas is when Lea asks Sora if he’s _got it memorized?_ , which is weird, because when he says that it makes _Sora_ want to roll his eyes, and he has to do it through the way he smiles.

So, it’s all kind of weird, and both of them cried, but in the end Lea does cheer up a little, so: mission accomplished!

Sora talks Lea into taking them back to the tower with a dark portal—he kind of hasn’t gotten the hang of the keyblade armor yet, and one trip a day is definitely enough, thank you—and maybe it’s a little unfair, because Lea pretty much can’t say no to him. Sora will have to be careful not to bug him about anything big. 

“Same time next week!” Sora says cheerfully as Lea ditches him to go wherever it is he goes when they’re at Yen Sid’s tower. He sleeps on a different floor than Sora does, and Sora doesn’t even know how many floors there _are_. Apparently figuring out how the tower works, like, spatially, is another one of those things he has to do on his own to make Yen Sid give him a passing grade. Ugh. 

Lea doesn’t turn his head, but he raises a hand in Sora’s direction, shaking his head, so that’s probably a yes. Roxas thinks it’s a yes.

Roxas wants to go after him, too, this weird awful tug below Sora’s ribs, but Sora knows when a guy needs some space. He goes to find Kairi instead.

“Took you long enough,” she says, when he finds her out in the courtyard making a bunch of training dummies wish they were never built (by Sora, this morning, because somehow making dummies _for training_ counts as part of his training). “You’ve been missing all day! Yen Sid is so pissed.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sora says, flopping back down on the grass. Kairi dismisses her keyblade and walks over. “I needed a break.”

Kairi leans over him, squinting at him upside down. “Don’t make me say it,” she warns.

“I wasn’t being lazy!” Sora says, indignant. “I wanted to talk to Lea, okay? That’s important too. He always avoids me when we’re here.”

With a sigh, Kairi flops down next to him. “So you cornered him instead.”

“It worked!” 

“Uh huh.” Kairi has this amazing way of sounding totally disbelieving without changing her voice at all. It’s great. “How’s he doing?” 

“I mean,” Sora says, “about as well as he can be? He really misses Roxas. And the part of me that’s Roxas really misses him. But it’s just...not the same. It can’t be.” In Sora’s experience, hugging someone and having a good cry should make him feel better. But he still feels kind of itchy inside, totally unsettled. 

Kaira nudges him in the leg with her foot. He hadn’t realized he’d been bouncing it. “And how are _you_ doing?”

Sora blows a raspberry at the sky. “I feel weird. Like...sad weird. I thought I would feel better.” He sits up and rubs at his eyes. “Or that Roxas would. But I’m pretty sure that both of us just feel worse.”

“Sora, you know you can’t replace Roxas for Lea, right?”

“Duh,” Sora says. “That would be like...replacing you, or replacing Riku. But if I met someone who was like Riku, but kind of shaken up and put back together in the wrong way, that person would still be my friend! Because there’d always be a part of Riku there.”

“Sora,” Kairi says, smiling up at him, “don’t ever change.” 

“I’m still not planning on it!”

Kairi laughs, and she stands up, brushing herself off. “Well, _I’m_ going to go eat dinner before the brooms shut down the kitchen. I heard they were making stew today. Coming?”

“Nah,” Sora says. “I still need to think about some stuff.”

Kairi puts her hands on her hips. “What kind of stuff?”

He doesn’t even know. Ugh, it’s like he’s looking for a word that’s on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t even know what he’s trying to say in the first place! “I don’t know. I need to think about it.”

“Well, okay,” Kairi says. “Yell if you need to get your ass kicked to get your head back on straight.”

“Very funny,” Sora calls after her. Maybe getting knocked on the head _would_ help. 

Sora tucks his hands behind his head and watches the stars wink down at him for a long time. He wonders how many of them are worlds that he’s been to—or that Roxas has been to, or Ventus, or—any other part of him. 

Roxas remembers a lot of worlds, but they all kind of blur together. The clearest memories are the most important ones—clocktowers and ice cream and the sunset. Sora’s eyes start to sting again. 

“Hey,” Riku calls, his boots thumping towards Sora on the grass. “You missed dinner!” He drops a tray by Sora’s head, and then drops himself down on Sora’s other side. “I haven’t seen you all day.”

It’s been so long since they’ve spent enough time together for that to even be strange, not seeing each other for a few hours at a time. Sora grins up at Riku, suddenly so glad to see him that he wants to cry about _that_ , too. 

“I was with Lea,” he repeats, feeling that weird tug under his ribs again, and then he sits up all at once. _Oh_. 

He asked if Lea had anything he’d wanted to say, but there was something Roxas wanted to say too.

“Okay,” Riku says, kind of skeptically, because Riku doesn’t totally trust Lea. Honestly, Riku is kind of a jerk to most people, so it’s not a huge deal. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What matters right now is that Sora hugs Riku, as tightly as possible. Riku squeaks a bit and almost overbalances. “Sora! What’s gotten into you?” His hand goes to Sora’s back though, holding him steady, so Sora knows he doesn’t really mind. 

“I just really missed you,” Sora says, muffled into Riku’s collar, but that’s not really true. It feels kind of the same though, the huge chasm that opened up in Sora’s stomach all the time Riku was gone. “I mean, being with Lea made me feel really weird, and feeling weird made me miss you, kind of.”

“Uh huh,” Riku says. “That totally makes sense.”

“Shut up,” Sora says, pulling back to smile up at Riku. “My heart is really complicated, you know!” 

“Yeah, I know,” Riku says, so serious that it would be funny, if he didn’t reach out to put a hand to Sora’s chest, right over his heart. 

Earlier this morning Sora probably would have just smiled at him and let the moment pass. He’s let a lot of moments pass. But he can’t right now, not with his heart still aching from having to leave Lea behind, from not even being the person who never got the chance—

Sora lunges forward and kisses him, and this time they do overbalance. Riku catches him, though, and Sora gets a hand at the back of his head before it hits the ground, because they always protect each other. 

It’s nice! Sora kind of always knew it would be nice, when he thought about what it would be like to kiss Riku. He figured it could probably wait until after, you know, they saved the universe another time or ten.

Okay, Sora’d mostly been waiting until he was a keyblade master too, so that it could be something to celebrate, but.

But.

Roxas didn’t know what it meant, at first, when he looked over at Axel on the clocktower and felt like there was something fluttering around in his stomach, demanding to be let out. He didn’t know why he got so mad he wanted to cry when Axel wouldn’t trust him with the truth. He didn’t know why the days with Axel were so much better than the days without. 

He kind of started to figure it out, after he saw Beast and Belle and first heard the word _love_. But Axel’s explanation didn’t make any sense, and he kind of avoided Roxas’s eyes when he gave it, and if Nobodies didn’t have feelings why did that _hurt_ —

And in the end, he only had three hundred and fifty-eight days. He just ran out of time. He never said anything about it at all. 

And maybe Sora was a little scared, too, and that’s why he let all those moments pass, but—they don’t have _time_ to be scared anymore. He can’t just keep waiting. 

“Hi,” he says, because it doesn’t seem like Riku’s going to say anything. Too busy blushing his face off, looks like.

“You are _unbelievable_ ,” Riku says, but in that warm kind of way, and Sora just smiles and kisses him and has to figure out the best way to make those two things compatible. Then Riku goes and ruins it by laughing. 

Eventually Riku pushes him over so they’re both on their sides, facing each other, and then he just looks at Sora for a while. Sora looks back. He kind of wishes they could go back to kissing. He doesn't have to think so much, then. Thinking right now is maybe a mistake.

Riku reaches out and presses his thumb to Sora’s cheek, just under his eye. This new Riku—the one who can playfight with Sora but can also be this strangely gentle—only started showing up after they got back to Destiny Islands the first time. Sora doesn’t usually like being treated like he’s fragile, but it makes Riku feel better, to be gentle with him, so that’s okay. And it does feel nice, to be cared for.

“Sora.” Riku’s voice is all serious again now.

“Yeah, I know,” Sora says, letting Riku wipe away the tears for him. At least they’re kind of his this time. “Like I said. I was with Lea, and it made me think about him, and Roxas, and how—if I ever lost you, Riku—”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know,” Sora says. “But. I just wanted you to know. Just in case.” 

Riku strokes his hair and holds him close and doesn’t make fun of him at _all_ for how he’s probably getting his fancy new jacket all dirty. “I met Roxas,” Riku says. “Back when you were asleep. Just a few times. He was a lot like you. We didn’t really get along, but I liked talking to him, because of that. But it hurt, too.”

“Like a stomachache, right?”

Riku snorts against Sora’s hair. “Sure. Something like that.”

“It’s just not fair,” Sora says, burrowing closer into Riku. “He should get another chance. I should be able to give him another chance!”

“Maybe you can’t right now,” Riku says, “but with you and me on the case—we’ll bring Roxas back for sure, right?”

“Yeah,” Sora says. When Riku says it like that, he can’t not believe it. “Yeah, definitely.”

“So you have to stop feeling guilty,” Riku says.

“Only if you do too!”

“I’ll take that deal.” 

Riku kisses him again on the mouth and then on the nose, because secretly Riku is a huge dork, and then he makes Sora eat the dinner he totally forgot about, balancing his chin on his hand and watching him the whole time with this contemplative look on his face. Sora feels like there’s a balloon expanding inside him, a little, and it doesn’t totally chase away how empty and weird and sad he felt when he talked to Lea, how he feels every time he remembers that Roxas isn’t here right now, even though he should be. But Riku’s right. They’ll fix it! Of course they will: they’re together. They’re together even when they’re apart. And when they’re together, on the same side, they can do anything.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr and twitter at luckydicekirby. I will probably not shut up about Kingdom Hearts for the rest of my natural life.


End file.
